Small victories

I was able to eat raw greens last night for the first time since this ordeal began. Previous attempts resulting in me getting rather sick, so I had been avoiding them.

This is an exciting development as it adds salads to the the things I can eat, representing a great expansion of my diet. That is a good thing given how limited it is right now.

Some days, you just have to celebrate the small stuff because that’s what there is.

DLH

Plans of attack

Philosophizing is all well and good, but at some point, transformation is about actually doing a thing.

In this case, the first order of business is for me to get moving, and for me getting moving means walking. As things currently stand, I’m struggling to get to the end of my driveway (.3 miles, almost exactly) and back before I’m ready for a nap. That said, it’s a start.

But, it’s only a start. As I mentioned when I started this blog, I am a rambler, and rambling is a state that I want to return to. I’m not sure what kind of times or distances that means just yet, and I’ve yet to consider what kind of payloads I might add along the way (I’m fascinated by the idea of “rucking” for a variety of reasons), but I know that I want to be able to walk further and faster not only than I can now, but than I have been able to in a really long time.

I know some will ask where the muscle-building aspect of this plan might be, and I will be honest when I say I’m not sure where that might fit in with what I am thinking right now. I’m not dismissing the need, but rather, I’ve always had a certain aversion to traditional weight training, so I have to yet find what works for me.

This plan will take on more flesh as time goes on, and I plan to update it regularly with my progress, successes, inevitable failures, and updates.

DLH

Seriously, dude, no

Of all the changes I have had to endure since this new reality began, I have struggled with none more than the fact that I will likely never be able to eat the same way I used to again. That’s an ironic struggle given the fact that how I once ate was a significant contributing factor to how I got here in the first place.

I should also clarify that the dietary changes themselves are not as difficult for me as portion control. As anyone who has been heavy knows, you get hungry, and sometimes it takes long enough for your body to realize it’s full that you eat more before it says no.

The cruelty of this new state is that feeling of satiation takes even longer than it did before for reasons I have not quite figured out yet, so managing how much I eat has become a battle of willpower that I already, on occasion, have failed to win, with predictably uncomfortable results.

It appears that one of my enduring tasks on the road ahead will be learning to master my own instinct when it comes to how much I eat. That’s going to be a difficult task, but one I must master if I am to avoid far worse consequences.

DLH

Vampires

An unfortunate side effect of my current circumstance is that I now have to have regular blood draws to keep track of whatever it is my body is up to. I’ve never been a fan of needles, so this is a cause of no little distress, and I find I’m even more distressed by the fact I’m getting used to being stuck on a regular basis.

I’ve also developed something of a grading system for the quality of the stickers. Part of my aversion to needles is that I have always been a hard stick with soft, rolly veins that often collapse when penetrated by a needle. Finding someone who can get me on the first try is a rare commodity, and I do my best to remember who they are and what they did for future reference.

Today’s sticker was a keeper and used a few tricks I’ve never seen before like using an upside-down blood pressure cuff instead of a tourniquet to help things along. If I’m going to have to do this on some kind of a regular basis, tricks like that are worth remembering.

DLH

Already, the first of what I suspect will be many pauses

From the beginning, I intended this blog to be a blow-by-blow account of my journey, so there are going to be times when that account may be uncomfortable for some or downright icky. If that’s too much information for you, please do not read on.

That said, my digestive system has been fragile since I got out of the hospital, and I have had to be especially careful with what and how much I put in it, lest it get angry, which it does with a certain ferocity.

Unfortunately for me, I don’t have some kind of indulgence to blame for today’s upsettedness, as far as I can tell. I woke up this morning to system-wide discomfort reminiscent of a stomach bug or the way my allergies sometimes wreak havoc on me. Whatever the cause, in my current fatigued state, it’s taking it out of me.

Not to worry, though, as this feels nothing like the lead up to my bout of pancreatitis. I’m paying very close attention to those signs, as you might imagine. My hope is that this will pass and I can get back to the business at hand soon.

DLH

The biggest thank you

There is no doubt in my mind that I owe many people a debt of gratitude for putting up with me over the past several years, and especially over the past several weeks.

Without the prayers and thoughts and visits of my family and friends, both near and far, I believe things could have turned out quite differently, and I thank every one of you for your support even when I was not so easily supportable.

But among all of you, no one deserves a bigger thank you than my beautiful wife, Keba. No one else has endured what she has had to endure, and she has done so with a kind of grace and tenacity I can only hope to emulate.

Keba, you have been my constant companion and have loved me when I have not been so easy to love. Without you, I believe I would have let myself go even worse, but for some reason, even when I was at my lowest, you have never stopped believing in me.

Thank you for being here, Keba. Thank you for putting up with me. I love you, and I pray I will not let you down again.

DLH

So, what’s this all about?

It’s sometimes hard to know where to begin an explanation of something that has been coming my whole adult life, so I will start with the event that triggered the birth of this blog.

A couple of weeks ago, I ended up in the hospital for almost a week as the result of acute pancreatitis brought on by a dangerous elevation of my blood-borne triglycerides. The condition was serious enough the doctors opted to reduce my triglyceride levels by removing them using a process called plasmapheresis. The whole experience was the most intense and painful thing I have ever experienced in my entire life, and I realized that I am willing to do extreme things to never have to experience it again.

That brings me to the reality of how I ended up in that state. The circumstances that lead to my hospitalization were not just the result of some unexplained biological malfunction, although there is also that element to the story. Instead, a large part of how I ended up in that state began decades ago when I, for a variety of reasons I suppose I may get into over the life of this blog, chose to stop taking care of my body.

In fact, over the past decade, I had pretty much given up on taking care of myself at all, most often with the excuse I had more important things to do. I didn’t. Instead, that excuse was worse than an excuse: it was a lie.

This blog will be my documentation of the refutation of that lie. Over the course of the next weeks and months and, perhaps, even years, I plan to document my journey away from the lie of not taking care of myself toward the truth of taking care of myself so I can do all the things I do better. I want to share this journey with anyone who cares to follow along for the accountability of it, for mutual encouragement, and to provide a place to document the things I discover along the way.

As to the name of the blog, once upon a time, I considered myself to be a rambler, or as the Irish call it, a rover. I tend to wander without being lost, and have long believed that the journey is more important than the destination. I suspect my journey back to health will follow the same meandering but purposeful path so many other parts of my life have.

So, this is all about finding my way back to a place I should have never left: healthy and productive. I invite you to join me on that road.

DLH